The Door Is Closing on Access to Critical Materials. Are You Ready? 

Over the past year, in various conversations with executives across industries, there’s been a shift in discussions about supply. There’s less talk about supplier diversification and more about creative ways to secure or produce new sources of supply. Rather than waiting for market rebalancing or policy coordination to catch up, many teams are engaging earlier and further upstream than traditional supply chain models allow. 

And it's in line with what we've been seeing publicly, too – within the last three years, Amazon became the first customer for copper from an Arizona mine that didn't exist two years ago, General Motors purchased 38% of the largest lithium deposit in North America, and Tesla built its own lithium refinery in Texas. These strategic mineral bets are not isolated or sector-specific anomalies. 

There’s a growing recognition that when materials are structurally scarce, being “diversified” is no longer sufficient. And it means there’s a narrower set of choices for leaders: help build supply, partner early to secure it, or accept the operational consequences of being allocated what remains. 

On the Horizon: Significant Supply Shortfalls

With Davos just last week (find Chief Research Officer Kevin O’Marah’s on-the-ground take here), the prevailing wisdom or recent years holds true: companies should continue to diversify suppliers, reduce dependence on China, and expand their network of alternative sources, knowing that there will be transitional challenges.  

But many leaders are now recognizing a much more urgent issue: the lack of any available supply. For critical minerals such as copper, lithium, and cobalt, supply is failing to scale at the pace required by the energy transition and the accelerating buildout of AI infrastructure. The International Energy Agency projects a 30% copper shortfall by 2035, while Wood Mackenzie estimates that closing that gap will require $210 billion in new investment.  The copper shortage is illustrative of a broader pattern emerging across critical materials that now sit at the intersection of energy, technology, and industrial policy.

When supply is structurally constrained, diversification stops working as a primary risk mitigation strategy. At that point, the question is no longer how broadly you can source but whether supply will exist at all.  

Why Resilience Now Requires Building Supply

In earlier commodity cycles, demand shocks were often sector-specific. A surge in one industry created temporary tightness, which created price signals that moved through the system and drove supply response. However, today’s environment looks fundamentally different. There's the convergence of multiple long-horizon demand cycles that are accelerating at the same time and drawing from the same underlying resource base. Meanwhile, supply remains slow to scale, capital-intensive to expand, and increasingly constrained by permitting timelines, declining infrastructure, and geopolitical considerations.

The demand for the energy transition continues to drive sustained demand for copper, lithium, cobalt, and rare earths across grids, electric vehicles, storage, and renewables, while in parallel, the AI buildout is expanding power and data center infrastructure at a pace that materially increases demand for many of those same inputs. (This is part of the reason why we’re seeing increased interest and demand for nuclear energy – with independent energy supply now a huge part of delivering technological sovereignty.)

Defense modernization and industrial policy add a third layer of pressure, particularly for rare earths and specialty materials with limited global production and processing capacity. These forces are not unfolding sequentially but colliding in real time.

The implication for leaders is not the precise size of any individual shortfall but how supply will be allocated over the next decade. Access increasingly flows to those willing to anchor projects early, share risk upstream, and help finance capacity before it exists at scale. As demand grows faster than supply can be built, materials become more expensive and harder to secure at all.

No-Regret Moves for Now

1. Put critical materials into the planning model, not the sourcing playbook. Be explicit about which materials underpin growth, decarbonization, and technology roadmaps – as well as alternatives, like nuclear energy – and surface their lead times and allocation risk early in planning and capital discussions. If these constraints are not visible at the strategy table, decisions are already mispriced. 
2. Engage upstream suppliers before scarcity shows up in your plans. This does not necessarily mean buying mines, but it does mean direct engagement with developers, processors, and critical suppliers before shortages show up in operating plans. Early dialogue creates leverage through offtake discussions, pre-pay structures, or demand commitments that help unlock future capacity. 
3. Pull material access decisions into board-level governance. When access to materials depends on long-dated capital commitments, decisions cannot sit quietly or only within procurement or operations. COOs and CSCOs need to be in explicit alignment with finance and the board on risk tolerance, balance sheet flexibility, and time horizons for securing supply. 

The queue for critical materials is already forming. The only question is whether you're choosing your position or inheriting it.